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 1885-e] The Currency. The Fisheries. 657 in both parties and at the sacrifice of personal popularity, his fame will be peculiarly identified. In presenting it to Congress, he stated that under the law of February, 1878, by which the government was required to purchase and coin silver bullion at the rate of more than $2,000,000 a month, more than 215,000,000 silver dollars, which were each worth only eighty cents as compared with gold, had been coined, while only 50,000,000 had actually found their way into circulation, leaving more than 165,000,000 in the possession of the government, against which there were outstanding $93,000,000 in silver certificates. As the silver thus coined was made legal tender for all debts and dues, a large proportion of what was issued found its way back into the Treasury. The hoarding of gold had, so the President declared, already begun ; and the country had been saved from disaster only by careful management and unusual expedients, by a combination of fortunate conditions, and by a confident expectation that the course of the government would be speedily changed. " Prosperity, 1 ' said the President, " hesitates upon our thresh- old because of the dangers and uncertainties surrounding this question. ...No interest appeals to us so strongly for a safe and stable currency as the vast army of the unemployed. I recommend the suspension of the compulsory coinage of silver dollars, directed by the law passed in February, 1878." This recommendation was not adopted. The lack of " questions of difficulty" with foreign governments was supplied early in 1886 by the revival of the controversy with Great Britain touching the fisheries adjacent to the eastern coasts of British North America. Under the treaty of peace of 1783, not only were American fishermen acknowledged to have the right to take fish on the banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, but they also enjoyed the liberty of taking fish on the coasts of British America generally, and of drying and curing fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador. After the war of 1812 the British government held that the liberty of inshore fishing had been terminated by the rupture, while the United States maintained that the treaty was permanent in its nature and was not affected by the war. This difference was adjusted by the compromise embodied in the convention of October 20, 1818, by which the United States renounced, except as to parts of the coasts of Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, the liberty to take fish inshore, and, except as to parts of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, the liberty to dry and cure fish. With these exceptions the United States renounced any liberty previously enjoyed " to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbours" of the British dominions in America; with the proviso, however, that American fishermen should be admitted "to enter such bays or harbours for the purpose of shelter and of repairing damages therein, of purchasing wood, c. M. H. vu. CH. xxi. 42